MH370 Beacon Battery May Have Been Expired

New submitter Limekiller42 writes Malaysia’s transport ministry released its preliminary report on the disappearance of MH370 that disappeared almost a year ago during flight and has yet to be located. The report states that the maintenance records for the solid state flight data recorder underwater locater beacon [indicate that its battery] expired in December of 2012 and there is no evidence it was replaced prior to aircraft going missing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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MH370 Beacon Battery May Have Been Expired

New Concept Tire Could Recharge Car Battery

randomErr writes Goodyear Tire showed off its new BH03 tire that can partially recharge your electric car while driving. At the 2015 Geneva International Motor Show a new concept tire was displayed that uses heat generated while driving and converts the thermal energy to electrical power. The triple inner tube design changes pressure to maximize electrical output while adjusting to the road conditions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Concept Tire Could Recharge Car Battery

Mesa 10.5 Updates Open-Source Graphics Drivers

An anonymous reader writes Mesa 10.5 has been released to update the open-source Linux graphics driver stack. This quarterly update to Mesa has initial support for Intel’s next-generation Skylake graphics, Qualcomm Adreno A4xx support, EGL support on the BeOS-inspired Haiku, the new NIR intermediate representation, and other changes. While new GL4 extensions were implemented, the Intel/Radeon/Nouveau drivers only have enough support right now to expose OpenGL 3.3, but GL4.2 is expected out of the open-source drivers by the end of the year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mesa 10.5 Updates Open-Source Graphics Drivers

The US’s First Offshore Wind Farm Will Cut Local Power Prices By 40%

merbs writes: The U.S. is finally getting its first offshore wind farm. Deepwater Wind has announced that its Block Island project has been fully financed, passed the permitting process, and will begin putting “steel in water” this summer. For local residents, that means a 40% drop in electricity rates. The company has secured $290 million in financing, with funding from the likes of Key Bank and France’s Société Générale, in part on the strength of its long-term power purchase agreement with US utility National Grid. Block Island has thus surpassed the much-publicized Cape Wind project, long touted as “the nation’s first offshore wind farm, ” but that has been stalled out for over a decade in Massachusetts, held up by a tangle of clean power foes, regulatory and financing woes, and Cape Cod homeowners afraid it’d ruin the view. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The US’s First Offshore Wind Farm Will Cut Local Power Prices By 40%

Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds

First time accepted submitter irl_4795 (4020741) writes At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona NXP Semiconductors will demonstrate Near Field Magnetic Induction technology in a truly wireless earbud including wireless audio streaming from ear to ear. From the article: “The wireless technology being used to enable truly wireless earbuds is based on Near Field Magnetic Induction (NFMI). NFMI features important properties such as ultra-low power consumption and the ability to create a very reliable network in and around the human body, with both high-quality audio and data streaming supported over small distances. An additional integration advantage is also that it requires few external components. NFMI is a short range technology and as such also creates a private network, making it is much less susceptible to interference than 2.4 GHz transceivers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds

20-Year-Old Military Weather Satellite Explodes In Orbit

schwit1 writes A 20-year-old U.S. military weather satellite apparently exploded for no obvious reason. The incident has put several dozen pieces of space junk into orbit. From the article: “A 20-year-old military weather satellite apparently exploded in orbit Feb. 3 following what the U.S. Air Force described as a sudden temperature spike. The “catastrophic event” produced 43 pieces of space debris, according to Air Force Space Command, which disclosed the loss of the satellite Feb. 27 in response to questions from SpaceNews. The satellite, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13, was the oldest continuously operational satellite in the DMSP weather constellation.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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20-Year-Old Military Weather Satellite Explodes In Orbit

Pharming Attack Targets Home Router DNS Settings

msm1267 (2804139) writes Pharming attacks are generally network-based intrusions where the ultimate goal is to redirect a victim’s web traffic to a hacker-controlled webserver, usually through a malicious modification of DNS settings. Some of these attacks, however, are starting to move to the web and have their beginnings with a spam or phishing email. Proofpoint reported on the latest iteration of this attack, based in Brazil. The campaign was carried out during a five-week period starting in December when Proofpoint spotted phishing messages, fewer than 100, sent to customers of one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pharming Attack Targets Home Router DNS Settings

Star Wars-Style "Bionic Hand’ Fitted To First Patients

schwit1 writes “Three Austrians have replaced injured hands with bionic ones that they can control using nerves and muscles transplanted into their arms from their legs. The three men are the first to undergo what doctors refer to as “bionic reconstruction, ” which includes a voluntary amputation, the transplantation of nerves and muscles and learning to use faint signals from them to command the hand. Previously, people with bionic hands have primarily controlled them with manual settings.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Star Wars-Style "Bionic Hand’ Fitted To First Patients